


How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?

by Daephraelle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mental Anguish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1378201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daephraelle/pseuds/Daephraelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek keeps dreaming of Stiles to escape the reality of being tortured, but the lines between dream and reality start to blur until Derek is lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up?

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! First foray into Teen Wolf, so I made it short and, erm painful?

"How can you tell if you're dreaming?" Derek asked.

Stiles paused where he sat on the opposite bench, his hands wrapped around his elbows, eyes deep in thought.

"In a dream you have too many fingers,"

Derek didn't know why he reached out for Stiles' hand – perhaps he didn't trust his own mind to supply his body with the requisite amount of digits, but when he grabbed that pale wrist and saw the six fingers, he believed it, he trusted it.

And he woke up.

 

"How can you tell if you're dreaming?" Derek asked.

Hands in his pockets, Stiles turned away from the classroom window and moved carefully towards where Derek sat at one of the myriad desks.

"I'm not sure. I think there's something about fingers... Like, they look weird or something in a dream?"

Derek wanted to reach out and check Stiles' hand for proof, but he was standing too far away from him, his hands still in the pockets of his jacket. Instead, Derek looked down at his own fingers where they twisted in his lap. It almost looked as though he had too many – and something about the _wrongness_ of it turned the edges of the room fuzzy.

Like swimming through swamp water, he woke up.

 

"You know, there are ways to tell if you're dreaming…"

Derek laughed – a short, sharp bark of sound.

"I'm sure there are,” he replied. “But I'd like to think that this is reality for a little bit longer, thanks,"

Stiles seemed to smile in the charcoal dark of the burnt-out Hale house.

"Hey, if I'm stuck in a dream with you, I want out!"

Derek cast his eyes up at the shattered black ceiling.

"I keep having... nightmares. I'm far away and... there's pain,"

Stiles' face sobered and he walked out of the shadows.

"Well if this _is_ reality, why are you and I standing in the burnt-out remains of your family home? How did we get here? _Where is everyone else_?"

Derek had no answers as the house fell apart around him.

 

"Do you know how you tell if you're dreaming?" Stiles asked conversationally, his feet resting on the massive stump of the Nemeton, hands laced behind his head as he lay back in a dirty, faded lawn chair.

Derek said nothing, continuing to stare at the edge of the ancient tree from where he crouched beside it.

"Derek?" Stiles shifted in his chair, craning his neck to try and see him over the massive stump.

"No," Derek replied, his voice devoid of all emotion.

"It's just... I get the feeling that I haven't seen you in a while, so this is a little strange. Also, I'm hanging out in a deck chair at the Nemeton... which seems totally normal to me," He paused and scrunched up his nose. "Which in turn seems really... _not_ normal,"

Derek kept staring at the stump, hands wrapped around himself, his fingers studiously hidden from view.

"Derek," Stiles laughed nervously. "Kinda freaking me out a little now, so if this _is_ a dream, I'd really like to wake up,"

Derek shifted his feet and cleared his throat.

"No. It's better here,"

"But it's creepy," Stiles replied.

"Better creepy than agonising,"

Stiles tumbled out of his dingy chair and stared at Derek.

"Agonising? I'm pretty sure our lives – weird though they may be – are not currently agonising. Depressing, maybe?" he mused.

"No, no... There's something out there," Derek muttered. "I, I don't want to go back there. The nightmare... it gets worse every time,"

Well, you know what to do if that happens, right?" replied Stiles. "If you want to know whether you're dreaming or not, you just, like, _jump_ and see if you start flying. Like this,"

With that, Stiles closed his eyes and leapt into the air. His sneakered feet left the dirt, but they never touched down again. He turned a blinding smile on Derek from where he floated a few feet above the ground.

"Holy crap, it worked! I'm dream-"

Stiles' drifting form was suddenly gone and Derek was alone again. Sometimes it went like this – Stiles leaving first, breaking the illusion and leaving Derek in the quiet for a few moments, before the nightmare claimed him again.

 

Pain and bars and chains surrounded him in the nightmare, along with the curling sound of Spanish that echoed off the walls.

The easy murmur of conversation became louder, morphing into accented English, until it was suddenly in the room with him, attached to hands that were wrenching open the door to his cell.

"He may not look like much, but he can take a lot of punishment this one, before he breaks I think,"

"Are you sure you haven't broken him already?" It was a woman's voice – young, but there was no Spanish accent. "We won't pay full price for… for broken goods,"

A laugh and then he was being dragged up by the iron-and-silver collar that burnt dully around his neck.

"Open your eyes, cachorro you have visitors!"

Some final vestige of stubbornness kept his eyes shut and the voice laughed again, before striking him across the face.

"See! Plenty of fire left for you to play with. So. Now we will agree on price,"

Another voice – male this time – light and a little sharp with fear… or anger. It reminded him of the other dream.

"And there's no permanent damage? Nothing, um… removed, or ‘ _played with’_ beyond repair?"

The owner of the Spanish voice shuffled his feet.

"Why? You want to show him like a poodle?" Another laugh. "No, he is intact – we don't spoil our property before sale,"

Suddenly the chain was released and Derek dropped bonelessly to the floor, the voices fading as they left him alone in the tiny room.

Derek wished that the man with the light-voice would come back.

 

Jolts of fire shocked up and down his spine, searing streaks of nauseating red across the back of his eyelids.

"...He's in and out of it, but I can't see... fatal injuries... think he's going to be okay,"

Someone was cradling his head from behind, against the worst of the shocks, their thumbs lying along the edges of his face, fingers laced behind his head, weaving through his hair.

"...Scott okay?"

"Yeah that swipe... silver, but it'll heal,"

The hands holding his head relaxed a little and whatever surface they were on evened out enough that Derek slipped away into blessed nothingness.

 

It was like a hybrid of his two dreams. He was lying on his own bed in his loft and there was pain and fear... but there was also Stiles, sitting across from him, arms folded and face shuttered.

"Is this one of the dreams where you talk, or where you listen?" he asked, his voice a harsh and rusted mess like the rest of his body.

Stiles’ hands gripped the chair like vices before propelling him out and up into a tense standing position.

"He's awake!" he shouted before darting over to Derek's bed.

"Dude, you're awake," he said more softly, as the bedroom door opened and Scott, Lydia and Kira stumbled in.

No, no, no, this was wrong, Derek never dreamt of anyone else – it was only ever the laughing people in the nightmare, or Stiles in the other place. It didn't make sense, he needed them to go away, go away or none of this made sense.

"Okay, okay, they're going, Derek! Just calm down, see they're going,"

Derek sighed in relief at Stiles’ understanding. Sometimes in the dream, he knew what Derek was thinking without him having to say it.

"I like this dream more," he murmured, lips grimacing in a parody of a smile.

"You're not dreaming, dude. We rescued you from those crazy outta town hunters – you're home, in your own... sparsely furnished erm... home,"

A talking-Stiles dream, then. Good.

"These ones are better,” he whispered. “They feel more real – like deck chairs at the Nemeton,"

He giggled, but it sounded wrong.

Stiles was looking at him strangely, his eyes a little too intense for Derek to want to make eye contact.

"How do you know you're dreaming, Stiles?" he asked, staring at the ceiling.

After a pause, Stiles replied.

"You look for incongruities, like falling through walls, or words changing when you look back at them, or being able to fly,"

"I never try to fly in the dreams," Derek murmured. "I stopped wanting to wake up a long time ago,"

Stiles stared at him in silence.

" _You_ try occasionally though," he continued. "You always seem surprised when it works,"

Derek looked down at his hands.

"Then I have to wake up as well, and I don't think I can do that anymore,"

Stiles sat down by the bed, leaning his arms on the covers.

"Derek, I need you to wake up just one more time. I promise there's no nightmare waiting for you on the other side. I promise I'll still be here when you do – we all will,"

Derek scrunched his eyes shut and shook his head.

"No, I can't go back there,"

"You won't, Derek. You have to believe me. You have to _trust_ me,”

Derek kept his eyes shut, but he could feel Stiles' hands shifting on the bed.

"How can you tell if you're dreaming, Derek?"

Nothing.

" _How can you tell_?"

"...Fingers,"

It was torn out of him, like a silver bullet from a wound. Derek felt Stiles' hands reach across his body and take a hold of his own.

"How many fingers do I have, Derek? How many fingers?"

His eyes still closed, Derek let his hands circle around the delicate bones of Stiles' wrists, pulling them towards him.

"How many fingers," Stiles asked again, softly.

Derek opened his eyes and forced himself to look.

Five fingers on each hand, only five.

And Derek woke up.


End file.
